A New York City Adventure
by X.x.Try.Defying.Gravity.x.X
Summary: A fan of the hit musical Wicked gets taken on as a personal assistant during a summer trip to New York through a strange "Twister" of fate and learns the true meaning of Broadway Magic.


_So I don't have much to say .. it's me again the amazing Beck. So yeah I lovingly dedicate this crazy fic to my crazy friend Flo and thank her for getting me addicted to the wonderful Julia Murney. Disclaimer: I do not own Wicked or actually know Julia or anything like that. This fic is purely for my own and Flo's entertainment. Please don't sue us! This is set in Summer 2007 and the character of Beck is pretty much based on me though I did not, unfortunately, ever get to go to New York (hope to someday) nor did I inherit a small fortune. (hope to do that someday too) and I'm also only currently 18 but.. you know.. Writer's License. Anyway.. so yeah imagine it is summer 2007. Yeah Enjoy you Wicked/Julia fanatics.. especially you Flo. Remember. This is your fault. I expect this to have at least another chapter or two but can't promise when I'll get to update so we'll see. – Beck, March 2009_

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"Final boarding call for flight 5637 to New York JFK International Airport. Final boarding call!" The voice boomed over the loud speaker . Beck let out a groan of frustration. "I'd get there faster legging it!" She exclaimed to the man in the cart beside her as she tumbled out and grabbed her two suitcases and went dashing off down the hallway towards her terminal. She was going to miss her flight! Not good! Not Good! It was six in the blasted bloody morning and the day was already an unqualified disaster. Then again… when the day involved getting up at three in the morning, for Beck, it was destined to be a bad one. Beck did not do early morning calls and the fact that you had to be at the airport two hours early when it was already an hour drive to the airport to begin with meant that to catch a six-thirty a.m. flight she had had to wind up getting up around three a.m. and that had been laying out her clothes exactly as she would put them on and showering the night before instead of in the morning as she preferred to do. That way she could do what she called her "theatre change." Beck had been obsessed with theatre far too much for her own good pretty much her entire life and, thus, had learned how to change her clothes in about twenty to thirty seconds given what had to be put on and how many buttons and zippers it had to work through. A pair of jeans, a t-shirt, a belt, and a pair of sandals could go on in about twenty three seconds- as she had well learned that morning. It just had not been anything like a good morning. Good mornings involved waking up when you preferred- sometime after nine or ten o'clock.

However, what irked Beck even more than the early morning wake-up call was the fact that she had played by all of their stupid rules and headed to the airport ridiculously early and had gotten caught in a wreck right outside of Indianapolis and had been stuck in traffic there for nearly an hour putting her severely behind schedule. Thank you 9-11 for ruining all airport security everywhere! This was ridiculous, Beck thought as she hiked it across Indianapolis's airport towards her boarding gate. This had not been her original plan for certain. She arrived at the gate with a brief sigh thanking her lucky stars she hadn't missed the flight. Ugh what a mess. There was a perky blonde flight attendant standing at the gate in a navy blue blazer that was a definite fashion don't given her blonde hair and pale complexion. She looked idiotic in it. Beck wondered when she had become such a fashion cynic. She normally didn't care what she or anyone else wore. Not that she was completely fashion inept but she spent more time worrying about more important matters than whether or not her clothes looked perfect. And she definitely didn't worry about anyone else's. However, she supposed she could be more cynical when she'd been up for three hours already and wasn't in the mood to deal with any of this.

The perky blonde took her boarding pass with a too-overly-friendly grin and checked it with a computer all the while prattling on about how lucky it was that Beck had gotten there because they would be closing the gates in just a few moments. Beck contemplated homicide. She decided she didn't want to deal with the clean-up and chuckled low. Not that she was a crazy person .. she just.. had a very warped sense of humor. Not only that but it was too early for her brain to effectively function. Beck's lips just tightened up and she didn't respond to the woman who was STILL talking. Didn't she need to breathe at any point? At all? This was ridiculous. This too-perky-for-six-twenty-a.m.-flight-attendant was going to make Beck go nuts! Her jaw tightened and she just nodded stiffly rather like someone who has an unpleasant kink in their neck and walked through the gate onto the plane with her carry-on thanking goodness that she had evaded the woman for now and hoped that Perky would not be serving her seating section on the plane. If she was, Beck might well commit a suicide instead of a homicide before she got to JFK. That could not possibly be normal! Who acted that way at this time of morning. She sighed and stuffed her bag into the carry on receptacle up above her seat and sunk down into it.

The seat itself was made of blue and black checkered material and had a leather head rest on it and arms of some sort of uniform grey- typical airline seat, but it was right over the front edge of the wing, which Beck knew was the place with the least turbulence to sit on a plane and it was the seat she always chose when booking her tickets. She sighed and didn't even pay attention to the other people on the plane looking at her in askance since she was basically the last person to board. There was no one sitting beside her. She leaned over against the window and looked down at the asphalt beneath the plane and the big buildings and all the lights. She yawned and reached over to fasten her seatbelt as someone came on the loud speaker.. OH nooo.. Perky- standing in the aisle.. Aii this day was a nightmare already! Beck was going to have to put up with Perky all the way to New York? Say it ain't so!?

Luckily, Perky seemed to get the message and avoided the dark haired girl. Beck didn't consider herself a mean person, in fact, she was very nice- just not at this time of morning after the hell she'd already been through just to get on this plane. That also included almost getting searched in a cubicle when security kept going off at the metal detector. Well, she realized, the holes in her belt had little pieces of metal in them. Something no one had thought to point out to her until her fifth time setting off the alarm. However, Beck reminded herself, she was on the plane now and she could enjoy the rest of her summer. This thought brought a smile to her face. Summer was going to be great. Beck was twenty one years old and off to exciting things and exciting places. She intended to live her dream for at least a few months before heading off to books and cadavers. Strictly speaking, Beck was going to become a pediatrician. She was still a little scared to say that. She'd lived in constant fear the last four years that she wouldn't even pass her MCATS – the test you had to do well on to get admitted to medical school- but she'd done well enough and that was what counted. Her score was nothing spectacular given that the test was math intrinsic- but it had been good enough to get her accepted to a medical school and that was all that was really important. However, besides medicine, Beck had another passion and that was Theatre. She'd been involved with stage ever since she was seven years old. Well, seriously involved anyway- her first play had been when she was about three but at the age of seven was when it got serious. It seemed strange that a girl who was so passionate about medicine and becoming a doctor could also love the stage so much. However, she did and those two loves had never competed with each other. She hoped when she was forty she'd be a doctor and still be doing plays at her local theatre. Who knew, maybe her fiancée, Michael, would be running his own theatre by that time. He'd graduated with a degree in theatre from Arts Educational Trust in London a few years before. However, he was currently in London working to save money to come to the States and it would probably be around Christmas.

In any case, Beck's biggest dream had always been to see Broadway. Specifically to see a lot of Broadway and go on a trip to New York City for a few weeks but the opportunity had just never come up. Beck had considered herself fairly fortunate to be an only child with older very settled parents, but still the money for an extended trip to New York City, which was expensive, had never come up. However, then a few years ago things had changed. A woman Beck had taken care of during a nursing class in high school had died and bequeathed back a few thousand dollars to, in the words of the will, "Experience Broadway for those that couldn't." The lady had apparently been rich. Who knew? Certainly not Beck! However, she'd kept the money safe all of this time given that her parents hadn't trusted the then sixteen year old to go running off to New York by herself. Not that she particularly blamed them and they still weren't horribly keen on the idea. However, they didn't argue with the idea that the money could be spent, at least what she needed, on a New York trip since that's what it had been left to her for. Some of it had gone to college classes, but some of it would really go to Beck's dream… seeing every show on Broadway and living in New York for a summer. It was going to be the best summer. She was even going to bring her resume there. Beck wasn't an idiot and didn't plan to make it big or anything, but maybe she could get taken on as an understudy somewhere or even as an ensemble member or as a makeup tech or.. anything really. She just was determined to be a part of the magic for one glorious summer. Even if all she was doing was mopping floors- they were still _Broadway _floors. Well.. you get the amount of her obsession.

Things had continued to go well when a friend of Beck's Dad's from high school had bought a studio apartment in mid-town Manhattan. However, the catch to the studio was that it was a mess- it needed remodeling- badly. He couldn't live in it and he was a doctor at a hospital with no time for renovating. Beck knew a little about renovating. She and her mom, a contractor's daughter, had renovated the condo she had lived in while attending college. She remembered the basics. Her Dad's friend had told her she was welcome to stay in his studio apartment for the entire summer, rent free if she would please please renovate the place. He had also promised to furnish all the materials she'd need. Well.. that would be easy enough. The studio was in Mid-town Manhattan and within walking distance of several theatre greats as far as that went. Beck thought this was lucky and wondered how much time she would spend being lost in New York given that she had never been there before and wasn't particularly noted for her direction finding abilities. Oh well, she could worry about getting lost later. Right now she would worry about the flight- which had lifted off into the air at some point in her musings and had probably been flying for quite some time.

Beck closed her eyes and decided to spend the rest of this flight in dreamland making up for the multiple hours she'd missed running her tush around to get to Indianapolis on time. She soon drifted off into dreamland and wasn't awakened again until the pilot of the plane came on the loud speaker to announce that they would soon be landing and that the passengers should fasten their seatbelts. Beck had been asleep and not ever unfastened hers, but she was relieved at the wakeup call given that she needed time to get her stuff together before leaving the plane. She finished getting her iPod back in her carry on and throwing all of her stuff together by the time the plane finished its descent and stood up, heading back a few rows to the exit with the mass swarm of other people currently heading to the same place. She gracefully pushed her way through to make her exit and headed out into the airport.

Luckily, JFK, though loud and hectic, had clear signs for directions and Beck soon found the exit to the subway line that was connected to JFK and went down into it. She had bought a month long subway card online from the City Transit Authority and had it mailed to her ahead of time and she was glad she had done so, for none of the people rushing by her seemed to have time to stop for Beck to ask them questions and, frankly, some of them looked like they would either like to mug or murder her depending on whichever struck their fancy if she should dare to stop them to ask them how to get into the subway system. She slid her card through the machine and took it back when the thing spit it out and then went through the turnstile and down the escalator into the subway tunnel below. Beck felt vaguely overwhelmed when a train came rushing through at speeds that looked, and felt from the windblast of the train rushing through to be at several hundred miles an hour, though she knew this was a ridiculous idea. Her train came through and she dove into it in strict relief. She stayed on the subway for the stops that past, watching for the one that would lead her to the studio apartment and then ducked off form the loud, crowded train in relief.

She used her key to enter the apartment and took the elevator to the floor that was hers. This place was arranged in floors and each floor belonged to one person and they were long, wide, and open with only two or three rooms. When Beck opened the door to hers from the small ante room she realized what the man had meant by renovate. There was NOTHING in the room – it was bare… floor to ceiling. Yikes. Beck groaned. The only items in the room were the sacks of renovating supplies – TONS of those.. but other than that.. it was purely empty. The furniture, she supposed, was in storage, but she could worry about getting that later. Much later it looked like. What a mess. She moaned. Not only was the place empty but for the bags of stuff but the walls were pure white and the floors were pure wood – a light, honey coloured wood. There were no decorations… no.. nothing. She sighed. Decorating this place was going to be so much more work than she'd originally thought. She'd expected a finished place that needed a face lift or some touch ups- not a brand new, never lived in, studio. She had a feeling she'd be calling her mom for help soon. But the place had potential.. definite potential. The whole wall in front of her – she was turned around about directions so she didn't know which way it faced- was an almost floor to ceiling window that spilled light into the room. It had the potential to be a gorgeous place if she could do something with it.

Beck checked her watch. Her flight had been nonstop and only taken about two and a half hours. It couldn't be only ten a.m. Seriously? She felt like she'd been in the middle of time warp since that morning. She sighed and looked around… well.. she needed to get lunch and since this place was bare, she wouldn't be finding anything here. She would have to brave the outside world again. There was no help for it. It was that or starve and Beck didn't think that a slow death by way of starvation would be a fun way to spend the next four months. She groaned and fished in her purse until she found her debit card and checked to make sure all was in order before shoving her checkbook back in the purse and throwing the purse over her shoulder. She'd had it for years it was small and just right for her – a navy cloth purse with a red leather handle and white piping and with a red leather R on it, given that her full name was Rebekah. She finished getting her stuff together and wearily closed the door on her disaster of a studio. She didn't have enough strength to even contemplate what she was going to do with the place yet. It had been a surprising blow the amount of work it was going to take. She hurried back down to the sidewalk and hurried down the street to the Subway stop. It was close – that was one plus that meant she wouldn't have far to hike it when coming home at night in exhaustion after whatever she had been doing all that day.

Beck had plans for her first afternoon in New York. Specifically, she was going shopping and sightseeing. She had ventured as far as 55th street and Broadway when she decided to follow a whim and go hunt down the George Gershwin. This particular theatre was one she knew she would be visiting as often as she could considering her favorite play of all time, was there. Wicked! Beck grinned at the thought. She lived in a lotto town now! That meant she could lotto for tickets and go see the show often! The idea caused her a great amount of happiness in and of itself. Perhaps she would even lotto for that afternoon's matinee? What a better way to spend her first day in New York than in seeing Wicked? She had, of course, never actually seen Wicked in New York, but she had seen it a few times in Chicago and on tour. She grinned even more at the prospect. She stopped all along this area to window shop and even decided to go into Saks Fifth Avenue. She figured if she actually bought anything there it might break her but she was only going to look right? Right… yeah right. Beck couldn't particularly have called herself a Clothes Horse but she wasn't a complete strange to fashion. She was, after all, a female. However, she liked to believe that she had more common sense when entering a store than did most people. However, she was about to be proven wrong as, after looking through all the displays, Beck left the place with a full bag of things that she just had to have. She had tried to tell herself that a little souvenir shopping was harmless but something told her that even so shopping at Saks was ridiculous. Oh well… she was in the City that Never Sleeps! It was okay to be a little ridiculous. La Vie Boehme right? Or well, something like that.

The only issue with this bag of clothes, despite their relative beauty, was the fact that she had to carry it. Oh well, she could live with that and – oh crap! If she was going to make it to the Gershwin in time to lotto, since you had to be present with a photo ID two hour before hand, she was going to have to hurry. Beck dashed it all the way back to the nearest subway stop and headed back to the nearest stop to the theatre and then down the sidewalk. One thing about it. The Gershwin would be impossible to miss. Once named the Uria, this theatre's first _big _hit had been Wicked and you could tell. A huge image of Elphaba and Glinda as on the playbill could be seen plastered above the theatre along with the show's logo. The building was in the first six floors of some particular offices and the whole design was of some kind of black material. Beck spent ten minutes just trying to get across the busy street in front and into the ticket office where she put her name down for the lotto and sat down on a bench to wait since the drawing was due to be soon anyway.

Of all the incredible luck in the world (it had to be right? It couldn't be misguided fate could it?) Beck's name was drawn from the lotto and she paid her twenty-five bucks, showed her ID, and took the escalators to the second floor where the theatre was located. She had only eyes for the intricate Art Nouveau design of the place as she followed the usher down the aisle of the huge theatre. She had the feeling that she was staring and she didn't care. This place… She felt that surely she now understood what Glinda and Elphaba had felt like on their trip to the Emerald City. She shook her head in disbelief and took her seat in the front row. She examined her play bill with a grin. It was going to be an excellent show. Julia Murney was playing the current Elphaba and Beck had seen bootlegs of her. The funny thing was… Beck had started out hating Julia's version of Elphaba with her deeper voice and her being comparatively older than most of the women selected to play Elphaba. These combinations caused many people not to like her. However, after seeing her in more productions and listening to more of her Wicked clips, Beck had found a true appreciation of her in that role. She appreciated just how much like bookverse Elphaba that Julia played the character. She supposed it was being older and wiser that did that to a portrayer. Whatever it was, something about Julia's Elphaba enchanted Beck. She supposed it was the actual acting part of it. She snuggled into her seat and read the playbill and then in desperation looked over her resumes in her bag one more time though she knew they were perfect as she had triple checked them the night before. Eventually, though, the theatre began to fill with other patrons and the light dim. Beck felt a great amount of excitement bubbling up within her as the Time Clock Dragon above the stage began to move an snort and its eyes to glow red. The first strains of No One Mourns the Wicked played and from that moment on, Beck was hooked!

Her attention stayed fixed on the play through all of the songs. Julia's No Good Deed left her with goosebumps that still hadn't gone away by the time the cast took their curtain call to thunderous applause and a standing ovation of a sold out house. She just shivered again and decided to head to the stage door to see if it would be possible to get an autograph. She didn't care if she had to wait a while. It would be better than going back to the studio in which she was going to have her work cut out for her. It was too depressing- especially given that she had no bed in there for that night. Lovely. That was going to be the first thing to take care of the next morning but she knew one night on the floor with the pillow and blanket from her plane trip was not going to kill her. Thankfully she had brought those! She sighed and shook her head, walking out towards the stage door and leaning up against the barricade. She wondered idly if it was meant to protect the stars from the rabid fans who came to see them. Sebastian, the current Fiyero, might just need it. He had been as good as Julia and Kendra Kassebaum as Glinda had had honest chemistry, or so it seemed, with Julia. She shook her head still chilled from the performance.

It was a little while later when the first person to emerge was Kendra and the other cast members began to file out. Julia was the last to arrive, presumably because she had to get all of the green paint off and she had succeeded. Mostly. Her hairline was still a little green and this amused Beck highly. She stood patiently, or as patiently as she could anyway, at the gate waiting for the woman to make her way over. Julia was signing autographs and stopping to take pictures and Beck was standing when she saw someone running up the sidewalk paying little attention to where they were going and balancing a thing of Starbucks coffee and stirrers in one hand and talking on a cellphone in the other. Aside from the fact that the person was male, it reminded her a little bit of Andy Sachs from the movie the Devil Wears Prada… the man looked stressed enough to have been working for Miranda Priestly. Beck was surprised to find that Julia was blonde, though she realized that the actress likely was not green skinned with black hair in real life. Duh. She chuckled inwardly. She had almost forgotten it all until she suddenly felt someone too close to her and her a yell of surprise from the girl standing beside her.

The rest of the scene unfolded in a horrific kind of slow motion as the man with the coffees lurched to get his cell phone which was flying through the air at a speed which would never be able to be caught and the coffees were- OH NO! crud! Julia… oh noo bad bad bad.. Beck had only time to realize what was going to happen but no time to even shout a warning to the distracted actress before the coffee hit her on the shoulder and spilled down the back of the jacket she was wearing and then dropped to the floor. The black lid popped off and the remainder spilled on the floor. Beck's eyes were still huge with surprise as the man shouted something that sounded vaguely uncouth and four lettered and ran on not even stopping to see if the woman he had just soaked with his coffee was alright. "Idiot!" Beck muttered after the man. Some of the other Julia fans were even less impressed and were actually booing the man. However, the actress herself didn't seem overly bothered by the fact that she had just had hot, black coffee poured all over her. Beck shook her head in horror as Julia peeled off the soaking wet coat. It was not going to be fixable.. it was white. And lace.. She just shrugged, impressively, made a ball of the jacket, and tossed it into the nearest trash can. "Well… what can you do I guess?" The actress asked with a shake of her head.

Beck looked down and suddenly she had an idea.. sure.. it was her favorite purchase of the day but…. Julia needed it more than she did. She was within the line of sight of the woman and she removed the jacket and smoothed it out looking at it. She believed it was Fendi and she'd gotten it at Saks. It was a light lacey jacket in white with an empire waist and fell to the knees and buttoned to the right instead of in the center with three buttons. She looked at it sadly once and then spoke. "Here.. it's not the same as yours but. You need it more than I do." Beck's brown eyes twinkled.

Julia looked up in astonished surprise as Beck handed her the jacket. "Oh!.." She murmured in surprise, "I can't… take this." She said, trying to give the jacket back, but Beck refused, shaking her head. "I insist.. besides.. It'll be good publicity for Saks right?"

Julia looked at her and Beck nearly fainted with the actress smiled at her and then turned and slipped her arms through the jacket and pulled it on. Perfect fit. Julia spun around lightly like a fashion model on a catwalk and grinned. "You've got my dream job!" Beck murmured in disbelief as she looked at the theatre. "I've been obsessed with theatre since I was a little kid! I mean even if I'm just a janitor or something.. at least it's Broadway right?"

Julia laughed slightly, "I wish my assistant talked like that." Beck of course was unaware, but the woman's assistant had just walked out and quit with no notice that morning and Julia had been somewhat overwhelmed with the idea that she was going to have to look for a new assistant on such short notice.

"Your assistant?" Beck pressed, wanting to remain talking to this unbelievably down to earth woman.

"Mm.. she quit this morning, but didn't give me a lot of notice." Julia didn't detail the slight argument that this had entailed as she felt it might be slightly impolite.

Beck grinned, "I'd love to be your assistant." She said somewhat flippantly. "I've got a resume and stuff." She smirked in what she hoped was a winning way. "And I'm pretty sure I have the entirety of Wicked memorized as it is. So yeah.. when you're re-hiring…"

It was impossible to guess what Julia had on her mind at the moment. "Well.. there's room for everyone. Come back in an hour."

Beck choked. "Wha?!" But it was too late.. Julia was gone. Beck's eyes were still huge as she shakily reached down to pick up her purse and found that it was -…. Half a block away.. "HEY!!!" Beck shrieked in "THAT'S MY PURSE!!!" She exclaimed, having no more time to consider Julia Murney or her mysterious offer if she was going to get her purse back from whoever had taken it. She let out a cry of frustration and took off after the man. All that could be heard as Beck ran down the sidewalk after the man with her purse…. "BRING THAT BACK!! IT HAS MY WICKED AUTOGRAPHS! JULIA SIGNED THAT PLAYBILL!!!!"


End file.
